Cheerios

If you’ve been following me long enough you know that I love to read, and typically I’ll keep two books going at any given time: a “for fun” book, and a devotional book. I’m treating it as a devotional book, though it’s not a Christian book. It’s not even really a religious book: it focuses on psychology but addresses love, change, and “spirituality,” though not in the God sense. I’m only about seventy pages into it, but it keeps me drawn in because of the truths that are comforting to hear as universal truths, whereas so many Christian books are geared toward like-minded evangelicals. The book starts with the declaration that life is full of pain – pain that we often put ourselves through in the psychological realm of change (“there’s something wrong in me that I must work to correct, but it hurts to do so”). But that change and subsequently that pain is necessary if we want to be truly wise.

I came across a line when I was reading this morning that caught me off guard. It says, “One measure – and perhaps the best measure – of a person’s greatness is the capacity for suffering. Yet the greatest are also joyful…Buddhists tend to ignore the Buddha’s suffering and Christians forget Christ’s joy” (76). And like I said, this book isn’t a religious one, though the author calls himself a Christian. But I found it interesting that this secular book could knock me sideways with such a truth.

You look at the most stalwart of “Christians” (I use that term in the human sense because people like this aren’t what true Christianity is all about), and they focus so heavily on the gloom and doom of their faith: the suffering of Christ, how undeserving of grace we are, the inability of humanity to measure up to the standards that we feel we are up against. They believe in working hard, denying the flesh, and focusing on being “outsiders” in a world that doesn’t understand them. And in their dedication they push others away from the faith that they proclaim gives life. And no wonder: who would voluntarily sign up for a lifetime of misery to gain an eternity of bliss?

They forget that being a child of God is a joyful experience. The apostle Paul himself, who was beaten, imprisoned, bitten by a snake, shipwrecked, and despised for his teachings, was an expert on what “suffering for Christ” looked like. Yet at the end of Romans he writes, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (15.13). Not only does he encourage his audience to be hopeful and peaceful, but he declares that joy – not happiness, but true, hopeful joy that endures in any circumstance – comes directly from God. Even in the Old Testament, where rules and regulations plague the children of Israel, the authors encourage them to “sing for joy” to their great Father. Take a look at the psalms every now and then.

There’s such a heavy emphasis on “suffering for Jesus” that we forget what a truly joyful gift it is! That’s one of the tell-tales of a child of God, you’ll remember, from that “fruits of the Spirit” chapter: the child of heaven who knows exactly what he or she means to the God of the universe can’t help but exude joyfulness and praise. I didn’t see anywhere in that chapter, “You shall know them by their furrowed brow and declarations of what a terrible state the world is in.”

Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful song.